With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin

Monday, January 05, 2009

THE REMAINDERS OF LONG DIVISION2009 and the Settling of Overdue Accounts

BARACK OBAMA AND CLEAN COAL – A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

By

Michael C. Ruppert(c) 2009 Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved

Jan 5, 2009 – I have had a few very strong and clear core beliefs and lingering questions since about the time I passed from toddler to childhood. I remember wondering with great intensity, when I was about three or four, "What happens to my waste when I flush the toilet? Where does it go? Where does the trash we throw out go? I realized, even in 1955, that all we were doing was moving a mess from one place to another.

Then, just a few years later, as I was taught long division, I would get a problem like: 51/1561 =. Diligently I would draw the long division box, enter the numbers and start figuring it out. But after a long time and several sheets of paper I would come out with an answer of .032671364509929532351057014734145… It wouldn't stop. I raised my hand and asked the teacher and she said that some division problems never worked out. She explained to the class that what we did was to round off the answer to the first one or two places. I remember that my immediate reaction, marked by cognitive dissonance, was "Well what happens to all that stuff you chop off?"

"It doesn't matter", said the teacher.

It doesn't matter.

At the time my father was with Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin). He was also a navigator on SA 16 Air-Sea rescue planes in the Maryland Air National Guard. What the teacher told me about division contradicted a world dominated by my father's military "everything must be neat" life philosophy where absolute precision in thought and action determined who lived and who died on a battlefield. I could not possibly have formulated the thought at that age but I intuited that there was a conflict between the precision of mathematics and the way the world I lived in was managed. "Neat and orderly" under an empirically-defined system without natural, spiritual or holistic groundings just meant chopping off a lot of insoluble problems and sending them… someplace.

Things might not work out perfectly in math, but might there not be some other way to view and resolve "problems"? Something different from the way we solve them now?

Flash forward to 1974. I am now a UCLA honors graduate and in my first year on the streets as a probationary LAPD officer in South Central Los Angeles. I saw things I could never have imagined; lives not only wasted but way outside the neatness of society's glorified self image. Criminals and victims alike fell through large gaps in a paradigm that was compelled to sell itself as being able to resolve everything with neat (and neatly explained) answers. Almost instantly I viewed police work as the task of playing trash collector for "remainders" of human life. They didn't matter in that ecosystem. By 2004 when "Rubicon" was published I had firmly concluded that the impending collapse of industrial civilization had everything to do with "remainders".

It had to do with the remainders left over after dividing an infinite growth paradigm by finite energy. It had to do with dividing ethnically and economically functioning geographic regions by arbitrarily drawn British borders as happened from Jordan to Bangladesh between 1900 and 1947. It had to do with the division of labor, land, commodities, natural resources, life and the ecosphere (all of which are limited) by a "free market" economy that was not free but manipulated and which required infinite growth.

It had to do with the division of an American people, self-gratified by a manufactured public image – some of which was true – being divided by CIA-sponsored coups from Iran to Indonesia to Guatemala to Brazil to Vietnam; from coups inside this nation (i.e. JFK, MLK and RFK), to the occupation of Iraq.

It had to do with dividing so-called clean coal by the monumental toxicity of coal's actual waste that will never be cleaned up… at any price. It had to do with dividing nuclear energy by the poison that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.

It had to do with blithe and dishonest statements that there were two trillion barrels of "oil" in oil shale by the fact that it's not oil but kerogen and it has to be cracked out of rock by heating it to a third the temperature of the sun; by using enormous amounts of fresh water; by destroying millions of acres of productive farm and ranch land, and by the fact that it will never be viable by any standard.

What happens when we divide infinite economic growth with its 96% correlation to greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere?

What happens when we divide the 2,000 or so POW/MIAs left in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by Henry Kissinger's statement that we got everyone out?

What happens when you divide the fact that a 1998 CIA Inspector General report established conclusively that the CIA dealt drugs by the fact that Congress said the matter was closed and there was no evidence?

What happens when you divide the fact that Wall Street needs to launder hundreds of billions in drug money to stay afloat; by the rule of law? Divide the Savings and Loan scandal by Enron and WorldCom et al, plus the fact that there were three times more paper mortgages being traded as derivatives than there were actual properties; by the fact that we (collectively) never mustered the will to fully address any of these crimes when we should have?

What happens when you divide the fact that, after scheduling war games to move most fighters out of the Northeast Air Defense Sector on 9-11-01, Dick Cheney injected 22 false radar blips onto radar screens and was also commanding a live-fly hijack drill as the attacks occurred, by the fact that the official version is that 19 hijackers operating from caves did it all alone?

What happens when you divide the fact that whatever created all life loves men and women equally, by the gross gender inequality fostered by cultures and religions around the world?

What happens when you divide the absolutely illegal imprisonment without trial and habeas corpus of all the detainees at Guantanamo by the fact that no country wants to be the rug that the U.S. sweeps those remainders under. (Australia has just refused a second request to accept them.)

Where did/do the remainders go? I can tell you one thing based upon a lifetime of study and experience. All those little tiny things that are cut off and forgotten go somewhere where they too collect compound interest of a spiritual, energetic, and emotional nature.

On this blog – and in the world at large – there is one group which looks at our current problems and insists on analyzing things under the erroneous assumption that these problems can be predicted, analyzed and treated by resorting to more (mere) long division… with larger and larger remainders. These people will always be wrong and they will never grasp what it is that now threatens life on the planet – namely the way they view and respond to it. Remainders can be especially dangerous when it comes to race, politics and geostrategy.

Those who can and will adapt to the new emerging paradigm will be those who have freed themselves from long division. They will be the people who discard the notions that everything has a neat empirical answer; that logic and technology will find ways to make all remainders go away. The survivors will be the ones who throw out long division as a primary methodology for perceiving the world they live in.

On a minute-to-minute basis now it is the remainders that are the big wild cards in the collapse of industrial civilization. They are having ever-larger impacts. The Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories are remainders. The Americans who have quit looking for work and fallen of the statistical charts are remainders. At the end of all these long problems lie the two to five billion people who will perish in a die off… as remainders.

And let us get one thing very clear. Free markets have no long-term vision. The long-term vision of politics is not much better, maybe a hundred feet further down a road that stretches thousands of miles.

Until the human race achieves a collective wisdom that acknowledges, incorporates and balances remainders instead of ignoring them, then mass, species-wide extinction – the ultimate "mark to market" is and will be our only ultimate destination. How far we go in that direction is up to us.

COMPOUNDING REMAINDERS – A couple of posts ago I made a comment about reading reports put out by places like the Brookings Institute. I called them "grist for the grist eaters". Someone on this list thought I was demeaning them for that. Again, I was misunderstood. Washington and the entire U.S. governmental and academic policy making establishment are grist generators and grist consumers. I was not criticizing our reader. I was making a point. All of these think tanks, policy institutes and quasi-governmental entities are master of long division. They divide, chop off a few remainders and then generate a grist report which is eagerly read by grist eaters who also generate their own grist for others to eat. More long division. More remainders that compound and mutate in the dimension of the unresolved; the Twilight Zone of Unintended Consequences.

It is because I have spent my life studying the remainders and not the grist that I have become so successful at making "maps" and predictions. I started as a remainder myself in 1977. When you study the remainders long enough you can discern the logic that created them.

All of our centuries of "remainders" are coming due. And as these remainders resolve the books of the earth, things will balance very quickly… Balance… Isn't that something we should have been seeking all along? Had we balanced (e.g.) Iran-Contra, 9-11 wouldn't have happened? Had we fairly balanced the S&L Crisis our economic collapse would have played much differently. Had CIA and Drugs been tackled fairly, George W. would never have been elected and the huge chunk of his father's staff that came back after 2000 would have been in permanent exile. Had the nation mustered the will to solve the assassination of JFK… Had "Crossing the Rubicon" been acknowledge by the federal government or the major media…

You see, we have been on the "Pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later" plan for almost all of our history, since we first cultivated crops. Of course we have almost always chosen the pay later plan.

Now is later.

A REMAINDER TO ROUND OFF IN OUR FAVOR – DIVIDE BARACK OBAMA BY CLEAN COAL

Some remainders work out favorably, as they do when I take a load of old clothes to Goodwill or make a charitable donation.

CLEAN COAL -- Barack Obama is going to face what may be his first presidential "balancing" with coal. We have all grown sick and tired of the blatantly dishonest ads rub by the coal lobbies about "clean coal". You know, the ones nailing Obama to a cross of-his-own-making by telling us that clean coal was our future during the campaign. There isn't one single clean-coal plant operating anywhere and there never will be. Even BEFORE the economic crash started, new coal-fired plants were being built willy-nilly. They were sorta supposed to be clean-coal but – after the plants were finished – the builders said, "Gee there's not enough money for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) right now. We'll come back and do it later, (thanks JulianDarley). All those dirty plants are going online now.

How much money will there be for CCS when the Dow is at 5,000, when we have 15% unemployment, civil unrest, you name it?

CCS is a hugely expensive, energy intensive and resource-wasting proposition that will solve nothing. For unknown reasons, George W, Bush's Energy Secretary Sam Bodman pulled the permit for the only clean-coal plant that was about to go online.

The other half of the clean-coal lie is that all of the destruction and toxicity of mining and burning coal has been somehow remaindered (gristed) out of the equation and somehow "gone away" Well, there's a huge chunk of Tennessee that's just been poisoned by a billion tons of totally toxic coal ash, filled with arsenic, deadly heavy metals and carcinogens. "Clean coal" never addresses the ash from burning coal or even the toxins released when coal is merely "mined". (When mountaintops are removed, along with all the trees and wildlife.

Some groups have taken to airing TV spots that totally strip clean-coal down to the lie that it is. I can't wait for someone to start airing ads exposing the American Petroleum Institute's Lauren Hutton campaign of disinformation. That woman should be truly ashamed for the lies she has been so well paid to tell.

If THE PEAK OIL/SUSTAINABILITY MOVEMENT has the slightest bit of political savvy it will recognize that our war is not one to convince everybody of all of our positions at once. Sisyphus would know better. But what happens if we knock legs out from under the defenders of the old, suicidal paradigm one at a time? As the house collapsed we would be the only ones left standing. As far as I'm concerned, the TVA spill in Tennessee was one of the greatest blessings ever. It is the club with which clean coal can be beaten to death very quickly… in a way that our new President might well be grateful for.

I strongly believe that Mr. Obama knows all of the problems with coal. I also suspect that one of his tough choices to get the nomination and get elected was to deal with the energy lobby. But he can be cut loose if enough pressure builds behind the TVA debacle.

If the Peak Oil movement has a lick of sense it will drop everything and spend its time, money and effort delivering the coup de grace to clean coal by flooding the Obama administration and congress with emails, calls and letters exposing the hoax of clean coal. Henry Waxman, the new Chair of the House Energy Committee and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should be buried in correspondence.

We all know the names Campbell, Simmons, Heinberg, Darley, Savinar, Hirsch, Bartlett, Bartlett, Quinn-Bachman, etc. At any one time all the giants are waging their wars and doing their great works. But what if – on just one issue – they all got together and focused their energy on just that? The one that's right in front of us; a battle where a great victory can be won; where our growing influence can have a deep impact?

I repeat myself to say that this administration is willing and eager to listen. But if we do not speak up who is to blame? For years I said that such efforts were useless. I was absolutely correct. It is the collapse of the economy and industrialized civilization that has beaten some parts of Washington into a state of semi-reasonableness. Their calculators cannot handle this problem.

I remember being so angry after leaving the last ASPO-USA conference in Sacramento. I proposed to myself and a few others (in semi-jest) that instead of having an Association for the Study of Peak Oil we should found a rival organization and call it, the Association for the Response to Peak Oil. We need that… right now. We need to lobby with organized force and resources.

We don't have anything like that…

MCR

[QUESTION: Has anyone noticed that the trial balloon about a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed got shot down? There has been no confession. That story was a trial balloon. And we are the ones who shot it down. (God bless Paul Thompson.) – It's just like the recent story about bloggers who shot down Obama's choice for DCI. We have more influence than ever.]

I'm sending a big wink back to Donna Brazile at CNN. Thanks.*************************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:

Google "Problems" and "clean coal" and you get over 400,000 hits. At least a few are on point.

How much CO2 are we talking about, anyway? Turns out that for every gram of coal burned, there's more than 3.5 times as much CO2 produced. Better remove a few more mountain tops if you're serious about this sequestration business, 3.5 times as many for anyone who's counting, regardless of whether they have any coal under them.

66 comments:

What a great post! This is my first time commenting here, although I've been following this blog for at least a year now. I'd read this article a while back- seems there's a company pursuing a new type of "clean coal" from sustainably-produced biomass. Has anyone heard of this? I'm interested in hearing if MCR, Jenna, or any of the regular commenters have any insights...http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:NewEarth_ECO_Clean_%22Coal%22

Just a couple of comments ...1) There is no such thing as "clean" energy let alone "clean" coal technology. CO2 sequestering is a prime example of what Mike's talking about, moving a mess from one place to another, from the air to underground. This will cause what sorts of new problems in the future?

2) The young man who disrupted the BLM's leasing process has a real chance to make an even bigger impact. He needs $45,000.00 by January 9th to hold the leases. To date he's received $19,000.00 in donations to do just that. If you have any spare change you can make a donation at http://www.bidder70.org/

3) I agree entirely with Mike's latest post. He put to words, what I've been feeling for the last couple of decades. That layer of onion thing. Each layer you pull off has another one under it that stinks even worse.

4) People keep wanting something for nothing and wanting it NOW!

5) The tremors under Yellowstone Lake appear to have stopped. We may have lucked out this time and my sanctuary in Montana my still be one.

Nice job, Mike. Entropy rules. As far as I'm concerned, the First and Second Laws should be taught in grade school. They are as true as is the Law of Gravity. And we're all introduced early enough to the apple falling on Newton's head to have that one tucked away in our brains somewhere.

I like very much Jared Diamond's book 'Collapse' (as well as Guns, Germs and Steel). When you think about Easter Island, and when they were down to their last tree...it seems so ludicrous as well as shocking. I try to imagine them cutting the last tree…what were the thoughts, conversations and debates- the realisations!?- . Of course, it’s so interesting that we are doing the same thing now~ yet not just in terms of one isolated society, but on a global level.Everything at once (as if singularly not bad enough)-from deforestation to energy abuse- Overhunting, overfishing, overpopulation, over growth and soon all these over’s will simply just be over.

Our voices seem so small- and it can make you a little crazy to feel so frustrated. It seems overwhelming at times. Just one of those days we all have, but I guess I still must resist and push on, no matter how inconsequential one feels their power to be.

I like what you wrote Mike…all the divisions, and I too have had similar thoughts, wondering where all our waste goes- as if I’ve always had an impression that we’ve all been sweeping it under a carpet- and now the pile is so vast and the carpet so tiny…it seems to be an evening of sharp comparisons for me~Best to all!

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that Obama will respond to anything other than the wishes of his task masters. He's as much a minion of corporate finance as Bush and Clinton before him. We all know that the US Democrat and GOP leadership is nothing more than a corporate mouthpiece. We've also learned that our Presidents are nothing more than PR Reps with the goal of implementing corporate policy. Nationalizing of the banks and industry, for example. Now that their control over media and government is relatively secure, they break down the economy and justify nationalization as a means to save the people - and harmonizing standards to more easily control a global system. In reality, nationalization in the US, under the guise of bailout, is the consolidation of power to eliminate lines between government and industry. Obama'a "change" will initially give the impression that government will "help", prompting a demoralized nation to respond to his empty promises, and approve of increased corporate control over our lives.

In reality, Obama isn't our next President. He's our next usurper, masquerading as a President. With that in mind, I appreciate the analogy presented by using the "remainder". It takes us beyond "lowest common denominator", which is often used but doesn't clearly delineate our situation. Would "remainders" like the Iraqi's be foolish to expect costly environmental technology from the forces who occupy them? Would the Palestinians be foolish to expect healthy and sound environmental technology from the forces who force them into refugee camps? I expect no different from the occupiers of the White House with regards to citizen demands.

FYI - speaking of clean coal, now that the ice caps are back to 1973 levels and we're in the coldest year in the last 10 years, I'm in the camp who believes that global warming is justification for Kyoto (global control of industry by corporations who control governments) and justification for carbon trading (another Ponzi scheme) and carbon taxes. Remember - our government is controlled by criminal corporate organizations. When they propose imaginative new ways to take our money, yet they refuse to govern the profitting industry who is causing the problem, you have been dealt cards from the bottom of the deck. Rather than asking for new cards, you should be working to rid yourselves of the folks who promote and provide the crooked dealers.

As an aside, Santa brought my daughters a beautiful kite for Christmas. On the next warm day we're gonna make it fly. And I'm gonna bask in their excitement as they discover the wind and it's potential. And when I finish this post, I'll be heading to the animal hospital to have a new addition to the family examined - it turns out that our new pet guinea pig was "expecting" when she crossed our threshold. Now we've been challenged with unexpected complications to an unexpected pregnancy. We've chosen to nurture and use her as a lesson to our own kids on the value of life.

In the midst of everything we face, life goes on. Breath it in while you have it. Dive into it headlong and live the definition of "alive" to its fullest. Because in reality there are no remainders. Every moment - from placing a gift under the tree when small hearts are sleeping, to facing the financial burden of an unexpectedly pregnant gunea pig - has eternal value if we choose to face and accept life to it's fullest.

I'm not an overtly spiritual person, but I certainly believe in the reality and significance of God and of the spitritual impact of life decisions. Whether you are a believer in God or not, live your life to it's fullest. Continue to seek and spread the truth in the face of lies. And remember that every human being has intrinsic value. There are no remainders.

Happy New Years. 2009 may be our most difficlult year yet, but we'll face it standing tall and full of hope.

Mike's right. If there was ever a time for mass popular input to government, this is it. Whenever I've been chumped into writing my congressman in the past, I've been rewarded with the same "thanks for caring, we're doing the right thing yep, yep" letter, and knew that my effort had been useless. But it's different now. Not for long, maybe, but right now.

The horizon is shifting before their eyes. Interest rates are down to approximately zero and there's still no traction. Military adventurism doesn't seem to be sustainable. And a backlog of popular discontent is building fast.

Think of yourself as a governor for a moment. F'cryinoutloud you do NOT want more trouble. You want people to return to their homes and have something to eat and call it normal for a little while longer.

There's probably stuff no amount of letter-writing will change. They won't abolish the stock exchange because some bloggers don't like it. The army will not stack its weapons in a corner and take up art classes. But as far as avoiding realy bad ideas when there's a hue and cry against them, that they might do, at this precarious juncture.

You gotta figure that there are some pretty savvy servants of Mammon out there. Many of these pols actually want to feel that they are doing good for the world, or at least for America, or at least for their conception of it. Clean coal is a bad joke and they know it. Anyone who's not directly dependent on the coal industry for their political existence has a fractional chance of talking against it when it comes up. If 'clean coal' has the political odor of South African apartheid, a huge tide of decency may put it in the bin where it belongs.

Two very short videos that pertain:http://action.thisisreality.org/coalergy (faux ad for clean coal - spread it around!)ANDhttp://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=7nS_aR8XX_U (a picture of what we must all do in 2009...yes, it's time)

and we all love this news too....http://www.startribune.com/politics/37100069.htmlWASHINGTON – Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA. Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California.

He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war.

Panetta currently directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay a university he helped establish on the site of the former U.S. Army base, Fort Ord.

Great insight, great ideas. I'm ready for bombardment. Over at Obama's change.gov site, I clicked the link Open for Questions and put 'clean coal' as an entry under Search Questions. There are plenty of great questions to vote on, including a few directly addressing the TVA disaster.

It may seem like small steps, but they do add up. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that the KSM stories fell off the monitor in America. Can't wait to see the final round of pardons in the next two weeks.

Great post, thanks Mike. I also agree that this country, and in a larger sense, this planet, WE, have all been crippled and brought to cliff's edge by divisions and remainders. They do not go away. There's no rug large enough to continue to sweep them under.

If industrial collapse has a theme song, my vote is for B.B. King's "There Must Be A Better World Somewhere".

Great post, and comments. I would be interested to know what folks think is the outlook for algae based solutions for coal and other pollution problems. There are several companies now working to convert C02 as well as other pollutants into biofuels using algae. There are claims as high as 1 million gallons per year of biofuel being generated through the use of algae bioreactors. So far, though, it does not appear that anyone has been successful enough with the technology to get a lot of attention. What do you think?

Mike, that was a great post. Absolutely spot on, and one I closely identified with. In January 1975, as very green just-turned-18-year-old, I started training as a psychiatric nurse, in a large, publicly run, Victorian-era asylum. It was a major culture shock, especially as I had to clean the piss and shit from the senile old women, who were herded like cattle in the toilet/bath block for the process. Like Mike, I was dealing with the left-overs (and still do). And it thanks to likes of Mike, and others like Campbell and Heinberg (beautiful souls all), that I've (finally), come to understand the money, energy and corruption equation that underlies our supposed "Sane" society. I'd also highly recommend writers like R.D. Laing and Fritjof Capra, who also pick up on the theme Mike is so brilliantly articulating here. Mike and Jenna, if you're ever in Australia, please don't fail to let me know.

F.Kamilov has left a new comment on your post "THE REMAINDERS OF LONG DIVISION 2009 and the Settl...":

Again, I don't wish to dampen the enthusiasm of those to whom this may seem a novel occurence or a new development, but the killing of Pro-government or Pro-US spies by the Pakistani Taliban is an almost daily occurence, especially over the past two years in which they rose and suddenly established themselves over large swathes of Pakistani territory, in its Pashtun-majority North West Frontier province (NWFP) and the neighbouring autonomous tribal regions, namely the Federally administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The following regions are their "centres of power": The North and South Waziristan, Khyber, Bajaur and Mohmand Tribal Agencies in FATA, and the Swat, Dir, Mardan, Charsadda, Kohat, Bannu, Lakki, DI Khan and Peshawar Districts of the NWFP. Of course, these names will be new, unusual and unpronouncable to most Americans, but these are where the Pakistani Taliban are or have displaced Pakistani state writ over the past two years - and where their summary justice applies - including the public execution of criminals, or beheading "spies" and leaving their bodies on the streets to rot for a few days, so as to serve as an example to the rest of the local populace.

To illustrate my point, here is a news item from Pakistan's leading English daily, "The News":

Four killed, newsman’s house blown up in Swat

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

By our correspondent

MINGORA: Four people, including two militants, were killed in continued incidents of violence in Mingora city of the restive Swat valley on Monday.

Separately, unidentified persons in the Shakardara area of Matta blew up the house of a local journalist, Hameedullah.Two persons, identified as Javed and Nisar, were ruthlessly killed in the Mingora city and their bodies thrown at the Green and Suhrab squares. Both the persons were identified as local militants.

The other day, militants claimed that three bodies found in Mingora and its suburb, Qambar, were of those militants who were allegedly in custody of the security forces.Meanwhile, unknown assailants gunned down a former councillor, Muhammad Sahib, in the Aligram area of Charbagh.

In another incident, some unidentified gunmen barged in a house in Watkay, Mingora, and shot dead a woman. In the Shakardara area of Matta, local journalist Hameedullah, when allowed by the security forces, found his house destroyed. Hameedullah, working for an English language daily, had no idea as to who blew up his house.(https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22903415&postID=2158050269715284546)

And another item also from today's edition of the same source, which has a lot to do with the other subjects discussed on this blog:

Thank you all! I knew this was going to be a good piece. There was a lot of... sorous (sp? - any Jews here?), agita, angst and other BS&T behind it. I want to thank my long-distance muse Emilie for both the inspiration and being the grain of sand...

For a writer it is such a fucking relief to find words that equal the intensity of long-chambered feelings!

To XXANCROFT: What the heck is African Bluegrass? I want some. Where do I find it?

To Kamilov: Spacibe with respect... Pahzalsta!

We are all resonating with each other and it is beautiful... just fucking beautiful... You may quote me on that.

As a surfer you learn to become increasingly alert as the ocean calms. A rouge set could be right on the horizon. I should have known a mammoth post was coming with the main page lying dormant for several days.

And as usual, eloquent as always. Halfway through Rubicon now, each page begets a clearer picture. And let me just say that what investigative journalism gained with MCR, was unknowingly much to the chagrin of many literary and poetic circles.

This quote of yours I think sums up what I've been hearing you say to those attempting to solve or divide the new problem by the old paradigm: "THEIR CALCULATORS CANNOT HANDLE THIS PROBLEM." If you continue to use them you will fail this course.

And another interesting development down in Venezuela. There's such a disconnect between the gound-level services and nationalistic fervor Hugo has undergone/created and the Picasso portrait the Bush villians have painted him as. It mirrors farce.

Mike I once heard you on a YouTube interview speaking about South America in the same way I see it. It looks as if they (or certain governments and a growing consensus) 'get it' and are preparing. Like they're out of the starting block and into full stride while the rest of the world is still stretching and tying their shoes. (Or even still sitting on the toilet not giving a shit, pardon the pun, as to where it goes 'as long as its not here.'

'The War on Democracy' is a good documentary illustrating the ill-fated American sponsored coup of Hugo Chavez (among many others) and the state of South American politics. http://www.freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=171When the SHTF the former 3rd world economies and gov'ts of South America may be where the new world begins.

Mike, re "I remember being so angry after leaving the last ASPO-USA conference in Sacramento. I proposed to myself and a few others (in semi-jest) that instead of having an Association for the Study of Peak Oil we should found a rival organization and call it, the Association for the Response to Peak Oil. We need that… right now. We need to lobby with organized force and resources."

Care to expand on this, in particular, "I remember being so angry?" Is it because you think that ASPO-USA will just be co-opted into institutional insignificance and non-effectiveness? Or has it more to do with your thinking that the organization is cavalierly pissing into the wind?

Personally, it looks to me like ASPO-USA fulfills a solid function. Their weekly reviews are a great tool. The hypothetical rival that you mention seems to me to fall under political initiative at the local and regional levels, up to and including secession.

The implosion of the industrial nation state, even to Peak Oilers, is still much of a blind spot. The last illusory sacred cow that may need to crumble before any serious work can be undertaken is national identity and its fawning handmaiden, blind patriotism. The collapse of a civilization means just that.

... sorry, getting in here through Google -- it's a bit sticky betwixt Google and me ... judging by some 'odd coincidences' which show up as pointed (key word) references in my email spam Subject lines ... relating to where in the world I've browsed ... the whole while I reside part-way up the escarpment on the west side of The Dalles, OR, looking down on the cyclone fence-closed 'campus' of Google at one of its major Server Farms -- glowing merc-vapor bluewhite all night, twin jets of sewer-mist steam out the roof exhaust fans all day, 90 employees confined to co.-built housing 'on campus' (perhaps breeding among themselves in there), and, also in my sweep of vision the river, Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean, tamed of its falls and deschutes through the narrow lava-walled Gorge by a series of dams, one of which is about 3 km away and generating 200 MW for the glowing Google Server Farm ... in case they ever need to mainline the full dosage, like, in case of blackout emergency or civil infrastructure collapse or something, I suppose ... anyway, sorry 'bout my commenting spasticity here

---------

Hi Mike, it's so good to be back in touch. A toast to baggies of thawing strawberries, 6/22/06 ... many 'odd coincidences' in my rearview mirror and in my apt.s (plural) sometimes when I return from being out, (not to mention every keystroke across this keyboard), ever since that day leaving your parking lot ... hmmmm

---My mumble this time started out to be simple. Just that, amid the hew and cry of Obama-this-way and Obama-that-way for the last month, it occurred to me that the man is sealed off, (by the bureaucracy of 'staff' and institutional protocol), in a non-contact bubble.

That's all. Simply that I doubt he hears what people are saying, or what's on the news, except as handlers (mostly neo-con) frame the info and he's briefed on it to hear. (Wayne Madsen points out that Rahm Emanuel's dad was among the 1948 Irgun group, armed by US and Brits, which first onslaughted incursions of Palestinian civilians, murdering thousands and driving 4 million into refugee exile, at the 'creation' of the Israel State as AngloAmerika puppet -- speaking of 'framing' what Obama is 'briefed to understand.')

Yet on the way to my simple point of commenting on saving our breath, (or, at least, not hatching too many reliances on Obama's actions), trying to reach or anticipate him through a (unnecessary) thick layer of 'security' insulation ... some other points got stuck on at tangents. So now I digress.

About Pakistan. Since there is mention of TheNews.com.PK

Review Tarpley's chapter in GHWB's biography on the 'CIAcreation' of Pakistan in '71-'72 (through and under the ISI, I think of '69). [That link goes through http://tarpley.net/bushb.htm ] All of that is likely known.

It's not really new, it's 4 years old. Written by his daughter. (Re-)Posted on his son's (Abbas Raza's) website: 3QuarksDaily.com

What a beautiful website. What a beautiful man, referring to either the son or father.

It came to mind in this post where you recalled your father, Mike.

---

(Madsen was over in the Subcontinent and Himilayas region, in November or so, and getting back he has featured some backgrounder items on the intrigues and double-agent and triple-agent and deceptions to consider in news reports we hear from there. As I recall it was on GlobalResearch.CA where I read the point that who 'controls' the Himilayas/Tibet, 'controls' the (potable snowmelt) water supply for 2 billion souls in Asia. That was during the Olympics and Dalai Lama 'spinning' several months ago.)

---So, so good to touch and be touched. Hey, if you're in Oregon .... Hey, if I'm in LA ....

Maybe I can get my astrology on soon. Seems like things might be aligning that are worth mentioning. Oh, there's this: Saturn ('establishment') opposing Uranus ('revolution') on Nov.4, 2008, and Feb.5, 2009, and Sept.15, 2009, plus a little into 2010. The last time these two slow moving planets were configured like this, (for your general 'reference' in 'precedent'), was 1965-66; and the time before that was 1918-20. So, like, every 43 years, plus or minus.

Have you heard of any 'establishment revolutions' or 'revolting conventions' going on?

Regards Obama and coal, there is an activist who is effective at getting coal plants canceled and who is also optimistic about Obama keeping "king coal" at bay. That would be Ted Nace of Coalswarm (forgive me if I've mentioned him before in a comment on an earlier post). They have been successful in getting lots of planned plants axed and says the coal industry isn't all that big or impossible to defeat. He also says Obama has been very cagey with his words about coal and will not allow dirty plants - which means there will be none if he has anything to say about it.

Great essay and analysis, MCR, some of the best stuff I've read from you in a long, long time.

I take exception to your assessment of free markets, however. Saying the free market has no long term vision is a mistake...and it is an even bigger mistake to suggest that the long term vision of politics is slightly better.

After reading your analysis and recount of about a dozen political scandals, interventions, murders, cover-ups, etc. I was genuinely astonished to hear you make the above assessment. The only explanation I can come up with is that you and I have wildly different understandings of what a free market looks like.

I was also astonished to hear you say that an Obama administration is one that is eager and willing to listen.

Parasitic in nature, elected bureaucrats will always do what they do best: maintain the minimal health of his or her host by paying lip service to their constituents' pet causes/projects before packaging their vote like a sub-prime mortgage and selling it down the river to the highest bidder (or lobbying firm if you prefer).

Indeed, the greatest trick the state ever achieved was convincing the masses that they had a voice, that they could vote for change. In reality, voters are the parasitic hosts who voluntarily submit themselves to enslavement. Nothing is so naïve as to believe TPTB will listen to you – a lifetime of scandal and corruption should have taught us better.

I'm from Norway, and I read "Rubicon" just last month. I am forever thankful for that book. Of all the research I've done, you filled in ALOT of blanks. I recommend it wherever I go.

In Norway the news are biased in the same way that yours is.

The reporting on the affairs of the U.S. government is nothing more than a translation of your massmedia-outlets. The KSM- confession still lingers here, so I'm asking: What did you mean by the KSM-blimp being shot down? did I miss something? I tried to google, but got no answers exept a Time-piece by Robert Baer. Is there any links y'all could provide for me?

It's a sad thing that most people dont have the time to educate themselves on these important issues, so I always try to start by presenting documentaries. You know, place some seeds.

Most people on this blog may know of alot of them but I thought I could post them here if anybody is interested. We have been waken up out of our slumber, but remember that there's still alot of people asleep out there.

Not really related to this post, but I'm wondering how you guys feel about Obama's pick of Leon Panetta to head CIA. Could this be its first director without Wall Street banking ties, or does that title go to Michael Hayden? I was quite uplifted when I found out yesterday.

clean coal = algae bio diesel. Which means empowering appropriate technology. This war of commerce has proprietary stickies plastered all over the green tech movement. What is so bad now, in Silicon valley and in the entertainment industry, there is no money for venues or venture capital. Its all dried up. Remember I am the son of Bert Berns, I just talked to Fleetwood Macs guitar player's son lol. Im sorry, I just need to tell someone that people are collapsing around me. Huge famous musicians could once get work can not. Ticket sales are down, concerts are suffering, even for Fleetwood mac.

Anyway, if the energy industry were to install the interfaces for Carbon sequestration, those designs could be retrofitted for a small energy park demonstration. I have the leading energy scientists telling me this about all the green energy, I love the Solar thermal concentrators. If you want to see the best new green energy research. Check out my web site, www.ecosutra.com

Okay, I am going to make an announcement to this community. I am wealthy and I am going to purchase land in South Georgia on swamp and grow permaculture systems. You all are invited to eco nest on my land. No problem. But be warned, we rave at night.

I have a team of artisans who are producing events to try to get people migrating to permaculture demonstrations. OUr next party is on the 24th. With the metroploitan Art Musuem of LA. Something like that. We think by showcasing the artisan theme camp ideas for village we can use the art world as the light bulb to bring in the people. We need to create an expedition circus. I am working with Captain Planet, well, maybe, I am waiting for the 2nd response. I have huge entertainment connections that are paying attention, just need to find a way to rally the troops and get the event production tight with animations for permaculture design. Do you all think putting on a show using green technology would do anything? The movement just needs people. FTW community should be in charge of a permaculture draft and be an organization that transitions people somehow. Why dont you all come to the party? JOIN MY FACE BOOK ON THE BOTTOM OF MY PAGE.

Mike/Jenna - Thanks again for all your work. I absolutely love the sense of community that's been fostered. And speaking of which...

Meremark/WM -Great post; and even better to know you're posting from TD. I know the area and am preparing to head there as soon things start to really sour (my parents live on the East side, to the east of the Hospital). I'd be interested in chatting, in person, since we're obviously on a similar wave length. I'm currently living in Portland, but I get out there fairly often.

RE: Have you heard of any 'establishment revolutions' or 'revolting conventions' going on?

Yep - I just watched some clips on YouTube (saw them at home and I'm writing from work, so no links) where a group was holding a press conference about their intentions to seceede (believe it was up in Vermont, but there were also people representing groups in the South and Hawaii). I didn't get to watch the whole clip, but something's brewing.

I'd also seen a couple of articles about an impending Constitutional Convention; the last one I remember reading was that Ohio just defeated the ratification, but any reporting on it is pretty scant. Maybe others have seen information about it and have more info...

One other thing I've been considering, regarding our predicament here in the states - the flies in the ointment towards any totalitarian style control will be our Ron Paul-subscribing bretheren. There's a bunch of former Delta Force/Seal kind of guys who take their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution very seriously. Case in point: I saw Jesse Ventura's interview about being grilled by the CIA after winning the governship of Minnesota. I'm not advocating for Ventura, but it was pretty telling to listen to him laying down the reality of our government's involvement. The lesson, though, was what Ventura represented - an unknown to the system. A remainder... and the law of unintended consequences. How fitting would it be, that the very soldiers the government trained to implement and subjugate for the Empire should be the ones ultimately to fight against it.

(As a final aside, I was looking at Catherine Austin Fitt's blog over on Solari, and she had a link up that fits in well, too: http://uk.reuters.com/article/companyNewsMolt/idUKTRE50306H20090104)

There's a discussion brewing at LATOC ( http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,34759.0.html ) about MCR's suggestion that prominent folks in the PO movement need to work together to combat one issue at a time and the most salient point made so far is why bother writing and emailing to oppose "clean coal" when all the writing and calling did squat to stop the Wall St. bailout.

I say let's create our OWN realities and alternatives at the LOCAL level rather than wasting time hoping that the Deus ex Machina of D.C. will swoop down to our collective rescue.

There's no time to waste on working at the local level. Permaculture-up, folks!

I took a look at your website and some other material where you have some internet exposure. Very interesting, to say the least. Right now the permaculture community is rooted in folks who look beyond mainstream and catch-phrases, but if we ever want to sgrowth we need some flash. It seems that you're covering that - excellent work.

I have a couple of suggestions. You mention that you have some wealth - don't use it as a hook to grow an interest in permaculture. To use our own lingo, that approach is unsustainable. Use it only when necessary to plant a few seeds. People respond and stick with things that they are personally invested in. We can't give permaculture away - we can only learn to attract others. I think you're on to something in that department.

Also, as full disclosure, I'm not sold on the progressive arguments for permaculture. My basis is that we're facing an imminent crash and that those of us who are prepared to sustain ourselves and our communities will fare much better than those who are not. Either way, we achive the same goal. Thanks for the post and the info on your efforts.

Anton V, re "where a group was holding a press conference about their intentions to seceede (believe it was up in Vermont, but there were also people representing groups in the South and Hawaii). I didn't get to watch the whole clip, but something's brewing."

For a good introduction to the NAmerican secessionist movement, I'd suggest http://middleburyinstitute.org/. Lots of good connections and links there. For Vermont-specific, then http://www.vermontrepublic.org/. Lastly, there's also my own site to flog (with link to blog) http://www.novacadia.org/.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the implosion of the industrial nation-state is still a major blind spot. The collapse of industrial civilization means exactly that. If one is content to sit around a philosophical circle-jerk trying to figure out ways to "save the world" then they can always join the Green Party. If one is prepared to defend and build one's own backyard, then it may just be time to progress beyond Green to the secessionist movement.

Hey Michael, THE REMAINDERS OF LONG DIVISION is an absolutely masterful, beautifully written piece of analysis... reading it literally brought tears to my eyes... right up to the words "what happens if we knock legs out from under the defenders of the old, suicidal paradigm one at a time?", that is.

Don't sweat it, my friend, the REAL PTB are kicked back watching these guys do it to themselves. And nobly intentioned meddling with what they're doing will only confuse the picture, add unnecessary fuel to the fire, and prolong the pain for us all. Let the dying take care of the dying.

I know well the challenge to one's psyche the need of moving from a long imprinted way of thinking-and-behaving into a comprehensively different paradigm can be... even after having figured out that the long-running love-hate affair one's life had been locked-up into keeping alive from day one is... well... clearly irretrievably headed one-way-only straight into the dipsty dumpster of forever gone gone gone.

As for The Future, personally, all I can say with complete certainty about it is that NONE of the socio-psycho-economic systems that actualized the world that we've all been integral components of since Day One are NOT going to be tagging along with the living.

Any details, specifics, minutia of That Future? Well, when they start coming into place is when everybody that's there will get to see how things are. I've already got my reservation in, and of course will be sporting a 'brand' new body when I get there.

I feel this has to be posted!I had a message written with links& quotes, but it went away?!

You have to read; "THE REMAINDERS OF LONG DIVISION2009 and the Settling of Overdue Accounts" carefully,if there is something missing, you were not thinking, it's like a puzzle, youcan not leave out a piece!No matter how (to you), unacceptable something seems, it'sstill fact.Google "Free market Myth", you will find 314,000 links.

The first one hits the nail, I'llquote for those who don't want tocheck the links.

"Efficient markets need transparency and alert cops on the beat. Why is that so difficult to achieve? Because opacity and rigged markets produce the desired goal of enriching the one percent who now own 44% of the wealth of the nation. This one percent, in turn, keeps Congress on a short leash by holding the purse strings to campaign funding.

Wall Street is a two-sided market. The Wall Street firms' losses were another party's profits. Until we know where and how these profits were booked and the details of how the losses occurred, we are choosing to be the idiots of crony-capitalism. We are choosing to hand our country over to the robber barons.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no securities position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com" From:

Mike/Jenna -Thank you both, again, for this forum. I feel like I've been invited to an amazing meal, served family-style, with lots of conversation and sharing. Mike serves up the main course, always something delictable and intriguing, something that we savor and suck every ounce of flavor out of, while Jenna provides the balance of the meal, the appetizers, wine and desert. Complimenting and enhancing the delicious dinner we've just devoured.

This meal is my spiritual food each day. I come here, and the amazing dialog that's going on, with people who are actually tuned in, it's so heartening.

Sebastian - thanks for the links. I'll check them out. I'm aware of the Cascadia movement out here in the NW, but haven't investigated it in detail.

And finally, a special thank you to RanD; personally, your messages really resonate, and I really appreciate the frequency that you're operating on. As a show of that appreciation, here's a couple of quotes from Henry Miller that I think you'll appreciate:

Over many centuries of time a few men have appeared who, to my way of thinking, really understood why the times are permanently bad. They proved, through their own unique way of living, that this sad “fact” is one of man’s delusions. But nobody, apparently, understands them. And it is eminently right that it should be thus. If we want to lead a creative life it is absolutely just that we should be responsible for our own destiny. To imagine a way of life that could be patched is to think of the cosmos as a vast plumbing affair. To expect others to do what we are unable to do ourselves is truly to believe in miracles, miracles that no Christ would dream of performing. The whole social-political scheme of existence is crazy – because it is based on vicarious living. A real man has no need of governments, of laws, of moral or ethical codes, to say nothing of battleships, police clubs, high-powered bombers and such things. Of course a real man is hard to find, but that’s the only kind of man worth talking about. Why talk about trash? It is the great mass of mankind, the mob, the people, who create the permanently bad times. The world is only the mirror of ourselves. If it’s something to make one puke, why then puke, me lads, it’s your own sick mugs you’re looking at!

… The art of living is based on rhythm, on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all the aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, “the dance of life”, as Havelock Ellis called it. The real function of the dance is – metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly, as Helba Huara proved to the world. But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. ... It is the first thing any one has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender. Howe’s whole point of view is based on this simple, yet revolutionary idea of full and unequivocal surrender. It is the religious view of life: the positive acceptance of pain, suffering, defeat, misfortune, and so on. It is the long way round, which has always proved to be the shortest way after all. It means the assimilation of experience, fulfillment through obedience and discipline: the curved span of time through natural growth rather than the speedy, disastrous short-cut. This is the path of wisdom, and the one that must be taken eventually, because all the others only lead to it.

I forgot a very important secessionist resource tool. It's a book called, The Breakdown of Nations, written by Leopold Kohr. I just checked Amazon and they've got used only, so it looks like it's out of print...again. It's a gem. Schumacher was a student of Kohr's. It was written in 1957 (the same year that Hubbert King sprung the U.S. peak year for 1971). I think it's safe to say that both of these gents were a tad ahead of themselves. BTW, are folks aware that King was an early heavyweight during the 30's around the founding of Technocracy?

A free marketer, who knows sqautabout history, commenting about anarticle of speculation, by someonewho knows something about how the world works, he's possibly incorrect!I read slowly, laugh and look fora clearer map, think MCR, an outsider, who understands "OUR"history!

"Zeitgeist Addendum" keeps poppingup. Compare it to anything MCRhas put out, it appears producedby a 9 Yr. old, with gaps, short disconnected arguments, & leftunfinished conjecture.This was not done by someone intheir basement, these are professionals with an intent!Watch it carefully, think about why it seems such a botch, remembera lie hes to be 90% fact to be believed.

I don't know how to directly email so please feel free to not approve the comment as it is meant to be an email. I wanted to play devils advocate on the gold issue, and how many say gold is the "safe bet" right now.

I am thinking contrary to that thinking and here is why: I see several similarities to how Obama is doing things, adding all of the fun new acronyms to out financial system just how FDR did. FDR also called a "bank holiday" which I see coming from Obama shortly after his inauguration. I think he will freeze trading and also transactional accounts until his economic team can "figure it out"

His "so called" solution will be to have Hank Paulsen call a Force Meajure eventually when the Dow hits 4,000 or less basically saying that the economy is a "force beyond their control" at which point the IMF will step forward and offer to sell gold to the US in exchange for the dollar in order to back a new gold backed currency.

This is the reason the IMF has been secretly BOOSTING the price of gold over the past 5 years IN MY OPINION, because they knew they would end up selling it back at some point, and they are also "IN SELLING", within member countries at only $54 dollars an ounce so they are stockpiling gold taken OUT of the US only to sell it back to us shortly at a 600% return. That is the reason they boosted the price so high, to encourage people to sell so they would have the ability to re-sell to the USA during this upcoming period of time. I am a firm believer that when the World Bank or the IMF place up new FAQ's, it means they are DOING IT ALREADY, and they have that FAQ up about in-selling already.

OK two bad things will come from this. First of all we will have the new currency eventually and it will be backed by gold (well somewhat), but in order for there to be enough gold to back a new currency 2 things must happen. The currency will basically be introduced at half the value of the dollar or less,so all accounts holding retirement, etc will drop in value by half or more over night. Values of homes, anything dollar based etc...all drop by 50% at least.

The second bad thing is that gold value will have to match currency outstanding since they will pseudo back the currency with gold, so gold will go from $800 an ounce, down to about $60 an ounce. So there will be HUGE backlash by all of the people who have been hoarding gold thinking it is a "safe investment", I feel otherwise.

I want to express to you these are only my opinions and I can't make time frame predictions, but I can tell you that one huge trigger will when you see a SINGLE country pull a significant amout out of the US economy, that is your tag sign for downfall in my opinion, that is when the plunge to a 4,000 DOW or less begins.

Luxocrat -- There's a lot of meat in what you posted. I'm going to have to chew on it in a while... It's actually a straightforward and logical argument and line of thought... It's well worth the time to see what insight I can find from chewing on it a while.

If gold were to drop to $60 an ounce, wouldn't the rich and other countries flock to it and deplete the supply we would open up? With a gold price of $800 versus $60, I feel the rich would buy as much as they could. Also, those who have invested in gold already would not want to sell it at such a low price.

Yesterday Russia stopped natural gas supply to Europe via Belarus. The reason is supposed to be Belarus's theft of natural gas destined for european countries and refusal of the former to pay the debt to Russia.

The effect was immediate to at least 20 countries.

SERBIA:The director of Serbiagas, Dusan Bajatovic, said, that currently they are supplying sufficient amounts of gas to their thermal and electric plants, but wich wil "not last long". Serbia is allready negotiating with Hungary, but the agreement depends on Hungary's estimate on how long this crisis will last.

In Novi Sad - the northern part of Serbia - reported, that they only have enough gas for today, but not tonight - 70.000 people could be left without heating tonight.

BOSNIA:Sarajevo allready felt the effects of gas shortages. The thermal plant in Sarajevo allready switched to "residual fuel oil", or "mazut" wich stock will last only from 7 to 15 days.

Same problems are occuring now also in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania, Slovakia, Czech republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Austria and Slovenia (my country). Slovakia yesterday allready declared a national emergency.

Now that rockets are being launched at Israel from Lebanon we can see the significance of the discovery of rockets last week in southern Lebanaon by Lebanese officials. Someone other than the Lebanese was planning on using them. It seems that whoever that "someone" is was finally successful.

"By way of deception..."

Considering Kissinger's comments on MSNBC stating that the current Gaza crisis is the opportunity to implement a NWO, I'm waiting for this to erupt into a devastating regional war. It's been my assertion for almost 20 years that Israel was created by the UN to drive a wedge between the Middle East (Islam) and the West.

If the NWO goal is global consolidation under an international system, the means to convince world citizens is war and economics. By creating and supporting militant regimes, and then setting them against each other, they can use their media to convince people that global unification is the only logical recourse to eliminate devastating warfare. They use the same plan when it comes to economics. By decimating thriving independent economies, they can use regulatory issues as an excuse to create a single global economic authority. That was the purpose of the most recent G-20 meeting in Washington.

I predict that the Gaza crisis and unfolding events in neighboring states will be used as a pretext for pre-planned military escalation in the region between other parties, including the US. I also suspect that the "known crisis" that will test Obama will be a preplanned event to draw the US heavily into the conflict - perhaps on a completely different front.

At the current moment, in addition to conflict in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan, East Timor, and in several African nations including Somalia, we have a series of regional brewing pots that could erupt into shooting wars.

The Somalia pirate situation involving the US, Russia, China, India, Iran, and several other naval forces.

India/Pakistan over the Mumbai provocations.

Russia/Georgia and now Russia/Ukraine - with mounting tension between Russia/Europe.

Japan/China - I only mention this because of resource requirements should China be engaged militarily according to the Brzezinsky Eurasia plan - China will confront Japanese claims before they'll confront Russia.

And of course, US-Israel/Iran. That one is being pushed hard by AIPAC and others as the Gaza coinflict continues.

I've left out tensions in Kosovo, Syria, Chechnya, Tibet, Sudan, Venzuela/Columbia, and others because I simply don't have the time to write a report - but if I did, I'd be looking for commonalities in each. Industry, finance, trade, leadership affiliations, state-level foreign activity, and NGO involvement.

Many of these have been ongoing so you could easily ask the question "why do you expect something now?" The answer is simple. A leading globalist war criminal who is internationally protected has spoken publicly on cable news, announcing that now is a good time to implemnt a NWO. And... war is now being waged by Israel (the tool of the NWO globalists that is designed to create hatred and warfare) on a civilian population in Gaza, intentionally raisng the ire of the international community. And finally, the timing is perfect for the crisis promised by Biden, Powell, Brzezinski, and others in the immediate days of the Obama Administration.

I stopped believing in coincidences many years ago. Watch very closely and carefully - my sense is that the timing is right to draw a lot of unsuspecting people into supporting a broad war. The only missing piece is a strike on Israel with devastating casualties, and a finger pointing at a popular scapegoat.

You humble me with your recognition. Such a service it is to our souls that we do such things, for ourselves and thus ultimately for the ALL. And so it is: what gratitudes and pleasures we share to each other from every learning that we see and share through the same looking glass as possessed by the Henry Millers, the Christs, the children of flowers, from the sweet, the firey, the warm gentle mistings of heavens, those places beyond and within. It is good to be here, to visit with you in this manner, and with the others, and thereby be ever progressively more with the ONE.

Hi Mike----as Firesign Theatre once put it: "Hello Dr. Memory, nice to see you operating". I've been wondering about some things in the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza and the Madoff scandal.

One thing I noticed about the Madoff thing is that, according to a list on the NYT website, a lot of the charities and private citizens that were hurt in his Ponzi scheme were Jewish. As a ripple effect, a lot of these charities gave money to activist organizations, the ACLU and Alternet being a couple of examples that come to mind off the top of my head, which are now struggling for donations to continue their work.

I noticed this morning from CBC (Canada) news that rockets are now coming into NORTHERN Israel from Lebanon.

One of the things that Christian Apocalyptic Millenialism (i.e. Robertson, Falwell, Warren, Dobson, et al) preaches is that after the tribulations, battle of Armageddon, Rapture (chuckle), etc. in whatever order they occur---one of the things that they don't speak too much about is that Israel will be destroyed after all these things happen.

What are your feelings on this, related to the whole Peak Oil/Global financial implosion/authoritarian state scenario? Have the neo/lib/con/victs decided to make a power play behind the scenes? Is Israel "necessary" any more?

from time to time i am reminded on words given by dr. king. usually, those moments aren't my worst ones. i rather like them. after reading your brilliant new post, mr. ruppert, those two quotes came to my mind today - they're not the worst either:

- Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.

- You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.

Hey there Shorebreak and Michael (the one from the chorus lands), you guys are damn sure hot-potato elaborators on the minutia of how matches are being built to start this biggest-time conflagration that's litening things up like they need to be for those that haven't quite just yet figured out where we are and what's going on!

Wow! Like our FTW benefactor-mentor, what major biggest-time super-sleuthers you guys are!

Fantastic comments all around for this post. I wanted to address a few:

To Paul: Thank you so much for that Transition California link! My attempts in the past to start a Peak Oil meetup.com group for North Hollywood went nowhere, hopefully I'll do better this time. Looks like a great resource.

To Shorebreak: You did a magnificent job connecting dots on the map in the context of Kissinger's NWO remark. Keep up the good work!

The "remainders" in Palestine are sitting on the Gaza gas fields - the largest new source of natural gas in the world. This is at least 4 billion dollars in money that should go to the Palestinians - unless the Israelis can get them to leave Gaza. Please see this article which is one of many circulating in the Indian, Pakistani, Turkish and other Middle Eastern news sources. You are right again. It is all about the oil and the battle for the 'remainders".

Have you noticed how the mainstream media is actually stepping out to condemn Israel? It's not across the board - BBC is still framing Israel as the responder rather than the oppressor - but there's a stong positon being framed that identifies Israel as the aggressor, the US as Israel's ally, and the Palestinians as a victim of horrendous war crimes.

That's the truth in the situation, but here's the rub: All of the media framework that's being erected to reflect neagatively upon Israel is directed towards Israel's refusal to comply with UN directives.

I predict that it'll ultimately be spun in a way to promote elimination of sovereign militaries, in favor of a UN controlled "peacekeeping" force like NATO that the UN can use to bomb the fuck out of any remaining nations who refuse to commit to globalist integration. They'll simply drum up one or more "humanitarian" reasons for regime change and they'll use their military arm as part of a global mopping up effort to eliminate any life remaining among their opposition.

That's why we're seeing large demonstrations beginning to organize against israel. It's time to implement the next phase of the globalization plan - which is designed to create a desire for global oversight over all military and economic affairs.

What I remember from some dealings with a high level economist with Republican Connections was his stressing that all forms of capitol are merely promises. A bond and a mortgage are merely different types of promises to repay plus interest at a certain point in time, a stock is a promise to allow you to vote on the leadership of a company, a dollar's promise is "this note is legal tender".

The only things that gives these forms of capitol any power is the level of TRUST in the Promisor.

It's interesting to see that people are looking with their current batch of promises for something to trust and turn over their remaining power to and the key to gaining power in the current situation is to offer something that can be trusted(with prudence of course). It may lie in making promises and keeping them and stretching our muscles to make greater promises over time. but, to me the key for myself as a small cog is to make these promises and keep them to those around me and build that ethic in those around me. And not reneg because it's inconvenient at some point in the future.

I'm offering if you will, a Macrocosmic or Ontological thinking here on capitol and trying to convert it to my own ontical/microcosmic actions.

Maybe building trust and working together to secure our futures with each other and building trust that we are not "bullshitters" is the key. This may be working a garden together and communicating thoroughly to realign the thinking to the best of our abilities on preparing for a tighter future.

It also lies in learning and investing in the skills to make and keep a set of promises (to grown food well for instance)that may have more power in a darker future than for instance... the ability to analyze and pick winning stocks.

The problem in the Macrocosm of Economics might be that the promises got to the point where they were all endless words that had no backing in reality with anything tangible... which is why I love the Ponzi scheme analogy to our system as a whole. We even allowed endless ungrounded promises to be made by many of those defaulting on their mortgages now, just to keep the whole scheme rolling.I'm going to go back to thinking on what I can promise that is of real value and flex that muscle. Thanks for all your help in doing that thinking to those in this blog.